#+KEYWORDS: freedombox, debian, beaglebone, red matrix, email, web server, home server, internet, censorship, surveillance, social network, irc, jabber
#+DESCRIPTION: Turn the Beaglebone Black into a personal communications server
Today everyone is concerned about privacy on the internet. At the same time there's a problem with the companies who have traditionally provided most of the web services. The people running those companies may be well-intentioned - as in the famous motto "/don't be evil/" - but the advertising based business model which currently dominates, combined with an increasing level of political pressure to insert backdoors means that it is usually impossible for companies operating within both their own business models and the framework of national laws to provide you with services which don't intentionally leak your private communications to advertisers, insurers or governments.
Another problem is the precariousness of the terms of service. Except in rare cases such terms are not easy to read, so many people end up clicking through terms which if explained more clearly they would never agree to. Over the past decade many internet users have had the unpleasant experience of having their blogs, videos or other web content inexplicably removed, typically due to some ill-defined terms of service violation or a false accusation of copyright infringement.
You can bypass all of these dilemmas and take back ownership of your internet content with Freedombone. Based upon the Beaglebone Black, Freedombone is a small and cheap home server which enables you to use email, have your own web site and do social networking without any built-in spying and without having to agree to any legal terms of service other than those of your ISP. It provides independence and security in an era where those things are in short supply.
An emphasis of the Freedombone project is the protection of private communications from indiscriminate mass surveillance, otherwise known as "/bulk intercept/" or "/warrantless wiretapping/". With only a few exceptions data entering and leaving the system is encrypted using settings recommended by [[https://bettercrypto.org][bettercrypto.org]]. Stored emails are encrypted such that only someone knowing your GPG password can read them and a GPG key is created automatically if you don't already have one. The system is firewalled with only the necessary ports being opened. Exclusively [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_software][free software]] is used so that all of it can potentially be security audited and proprietary repositaries are disabled by default. There are still numerous security problems with the internet in general and software always contains bugs, but a best attempt has been made to ensure that the Freedombone is at least more secure than average. A limitation is that this system will not protect you from metadata analysis, although it is hoped that new types of email system may be able to do that in future.
